Re:Volkswagen Is Ordered to Recall Nearly 500k Vehicles Over...
by baakss on Friday September 18, 2015 @01:25PM
(#10240558)
Corporations aren't flawless, but it definitely isn't a given that the people at the top have any clue what is going on with their software either. I can think of two instances that I've personally seen very similar to the referenced story where someone in middle to middle-upper management made the call, and only 1-2 devs/analysts had any idea what was done.
If anything that should go to show the lack of sophistication a lot of these projects have. There often is no project manager, no code reviews, and a messy codebase where snippets of very unethical logic can hide for years.
Recall that VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech resigned earlier this year http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/25/uk-volkswagen-ceo-c...
The board was quoted: "The members of the steering committee came to a consensus that, in the light of the past weeks, the mutual trust necessary for successful cooperation was no longer there"
What likely happened was that the EPA filed suit against VW in April, and in uncovering the evidence needed to support the suit, VW chair Ferdinand knew that he needed to go in order to let VW continue to be a company. Or, Ferdinand could have been the ethical one and blew the whistle.
Either way, let out the stink. Corporations aren't nearly the kind of flawless entities you think they are.